When an ambitious hotelier announces that he will be converting Springwood Hall into a smart country hotel, it is greeted with a chorus of local disapproval led by the fearsome Hope Mapple - head of the Society for the Preservation of Historical Bamford.

So the grand opening, to which all are invited, promises to be a lively affair, and particularly since Hope is planning a disruptive protest 'streak'. However, Hope is to be unwittingly upstaged by the discovery of a recently murdered body on the premises. Chief Inspector Markby and his guest Meredith Mitchell's summer treat has suddenly become a horribly sobering crime scene...